POS solution Revel raises $100M in Series C funding

The company will use the funding to expand internationally, and significantly grow out its team

With old incumbent legacy point of sale systems being bulky, expensive, and slow, Revel Systems, a provider of iPad point-of-sale systems for retail businesses, is looking to shake up an old established industry.

And now the company has raised a big new funding round to help it become the go-to POS System. It just raised a $100 million in Series C funding, it was announced on Tuesday. The funding came from private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe (WCAS) and other strategic investors. The round included an initial $65 million investment an additional $25 million equity line from WCAS. 

Revel had previously raised $13 million, including $10.1 million in June of 2013. It has now raised $113 million in venture capital funding from investors DCM, Rothenberg Ventures, Sean Tomlinson and Tim Tighe.

The San Francisco-based Revel gives food service and retail operators access to a suite of enterprise-grade operations and reporting features to help them grow their business. The platform includes complete front-end order entry, cash register and payment processing, plus back-end personnel scheduling, time clock and payroll, inventory management, comprehensive product/menu management, and advanced reporting to measure and optimize business performance. 

The company serves both mom and pop businesses, as well as franchises, Chris Ciabarra, the CTO and co-founder of Revel Systems, told me in an interview. So, for example, a mom and pop store would use Revel because it has a lower cost then average, its faster and it provides them with analytics.

All the customer has to do is purchase Revel online and it will ship either with its their preconfigured menu or one that the business can customize. They pay $50 per month per terminal, and can immediately start making transactions. 

"The system was made for high volume establishments and our hardware was adapted from the iPad," said Ciabarra.

The company competes with older POS systems, most notably Oracle's MICROS, which he said are outdated and have not adapted for new technology.

"We have an agile environment engineering-wise, which makes the product faster. Our code is well built, and allows us to make changes without causing problems. We also have a huge advantage in architecture, so our systems don’t all go down at once. It's 2014, we have better technology now," said Ciabarra.

The old systems have no updated because they are "huge organizations and they do things the way they know how to do them," he told me. "Without a major restructuring  you can't change the philosophy overnight."

Revel's philosophy is to make point of sale ubiquitous, and something that businesses don't even noticed anymore.

"We are all about changing the experience for the consumer, and the worker behind the register. We want to make this so easy they don’t even have to think about it."

The company will use the new funding for international expansion. The company, which already has offices in office in Australia and Lithuania, is also looking to expand to Asia. It will also go toward hiring; Revel currently has 200 employees and plans to expand it to 1,000 by the end of 2016, adding engineers, sales and support.

Founded in 2010, some businesses that currently use Revel include Popeye's Chicken, Goodwill, Magnolia Bakery, Beachbody and Pizza Patron. It had deployed over 10,000 terminals. Some of its payment providers include PayPal, LevelUp, Paymentech and Adyen Payments.

In addition to the funding news, it was also announced that Sanjay Swani, a general partner at WCAS and Co-Head of the WCAS Information/Business Services industry practice, will be joining the Board of Directors at Revel.